Researching Family through the Everyday Lives of Children across Home and Day Care in Denmark

Abstract

In this article I investigate family as an everyday life context and conflictual community. My starting point is an exploration of children's lives across their day care and home settings. Children's development is theorized in relation to their participation in and engagements with different communities across multiple contexts. I show that parenting is shaped by children's participation in these varied settings. I draw on an ethnographically inspired research project with six families living in a small town in Denmark. The analysis highlights how children's possibilities for participation are created across their different life contexts and it demonstrates that social interplay and conflicts among children in their day care institutions influence relations and interactions between parents and children at home. I argue that adequate theories of child development must take into account that children's developmental possibilities are shaped by the relations and connections among the contexts in which they live.

Critical psychology: A geography of intellectual engagement and resistance.

“…Methods include social analysis and interviews with children about how they live their everyday lives; ethnographically inspired participant obser vations; group interviews with children focusing on con flicts, challenges, and contradictions (Kousholt, 2011); ob servations of actions; and dialogue-all while emphasizing the perspective of children and analyzing opportunities for children's participation (Hpjholt, 2012). Some critical methods produce metapsychological critical awareness without having a direct, applied impact.…”

Participant Observations of Children’s Communities—Exploring Subjective Aspects of Social Practice

“…In line with this, in order to explore persons in social practices, the article builds on theories of social practice that emphasize the complex, diverse, and conflictual nature of social processes (Holland & Lave 2001;Axel 2002;Lave 2008Lave , 2011. This is integrated with a conceptualization of human beings as participants in social practice (Dreier 2003(Dreier , 2008Holzkamp 1987Holzkamp , 2013Højholt 2011;Kousholt 2011;Mørck & Huniche 2006;Nissen 2012;Schraube & Osterkamp 2013;Tolman 1994). In this conceptual work, development of subjectivity is understood as an aspect of participation in social practice.…”

“…These societal categorizations and differentiations form part of the way that adults deal with the children and are also part of the conflictual cooperation between the adults (Axel 2002;Kousholt 2011). The differentiations of the children are part of the social arrangements of their everyday lives and of their personal conditions for conducting their lives and taking part in arranging conditions.…”

“…In continuation of this, we can explore social situations as parts of a child's composite life. The concept of conduct of everyday life can point to how people actively and daily organise, prioritise, adjust, and coordinate their composite lives (Holzkamp 2013;Kousholt 2011;Dreier 2008). The researcher's knowledge of practice from the insideabout people's experiences, trajectories, and histories-provides an opportunity to reflect upon general life conditions and means that the researcher is able to understand better by learning how they appear differently to different people (for a more detailed explanation of the concept of conduct of life, see Holzkamp 2013;Dreier 2008).…”

“…2. We previously conducted 24-hour observations where the observer was picked up at a kindergarten along with the children, slept at their houses, and was subsequently dropped off at the kindergarten again (Kousholt 2011). We also carried out trajectory observations whereby the children were followed through their transition from kindergarten to preschool class and into grade 1 and the after-school centre (Højholt 1999(Højholt , 2006; Bronislaw Malinowski points out that ethnographers often have a "foreshadowed problem," that is, an interest in some particular area or aspects of social life.…”